about. one tweeted the event. seven nude people protesting events. police threatening to arrest protesters for indecent exposure john stanton said there are actually people who woke up today and said today, i'm going to get buck naked in front of john boehner's staff and so it is. getting naked is a tactic. a protest tactic and judging by the wide eyed tweets as it happened, today, nudity worked. see you again tomorrow night. now, it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. when kelly corey won the oscar for her first screen play 20 years ago, she had no idea that the heroes of her film, thelma and louise were going to become political role models.

>> white house is continue to warn of dire consequences for the middle class. >> on friday, he'll return to the stumps. >> he's back on the campaign trail. >> the campaign style tour. >> trying to drum up public support for his budget priorities. >> seems like just another fight in washington. >> there are really two issues there. >> a revenue side, yes. >> where is that revenue going to come from? >> increasing tax rates is going to harm economic growth. >> warren buffett was out this morning talking about tacking the wealthy. >> time to make the tax rates more progressive. >> that's just silly. >> grover norquist, he wanted ground government in the bathtub. i hope he slips in there with it. >> medicaid, social security. >> this is not part of the conversation.

we're not going to raid social security. just another fight in washington. >> there's going to be blood and hair and eyeballs all over the floor. >> i'm more positive than most. >> if not, we go off the supposed cliff. >> the fiscal cliff or slope. the bump of various height. thelma and louise might need to make room in the car for the president of the united states. at the white house today, senior obama administration officials met with liberal leaders and union officials. "the washington post" reports that one told him after the meeting, quote, would the white house go off the cliff if it's between that and compromising their core principles?

i was left with the impression that they would. illinois democratic senator dick durbin spoke today at the liberal center for american progress where he said this about the possibility of going off the cliff which fears of this show know is is really more of a curb than a cliff. >> some have called let's go over the cliff and watch what happens. we know if we're not careful, it will in fact stop economic growth and hurt everyone through every income category, particularly those most vulnerable. >> what he did not say is he must not go off the cliff. because the cliff is president obama's and the congressional democrats leverage over republicans. if we do go off the cliff or the curb on january 1st, a republican nightmare will occur. all income tax rates will go up and defense spending will be cut by 600 billion. other spending, some of it dear to republicans, will also be cut

by another 600 billion. the fiscal cliff is much scarier to republicans than it is to democrats. so, the president and his allies must continue to make republicans believe they are willing to go off cliff. senator durbin simply said if we do go off the cliff or the curb on january 1st, we have to be able to quote stop economic growth to prevent us from stopping at the economic growth and hurting everyone. in other words, we have to then quickly craft a legislative deal that can stop the damage to the economy that would occur if we went off the cliff and stayed off the cliff. john boehner recognizes that the fiscal cliff is the president's leverage, but boehner believes he has leverage, too. politico reported this morning president barack obama made a demand of how john boehner near the end of their first white house meeting on the fiscal cliff, raised the debt limit

before year's end. boehner responded, quote, there is a price for everything. boehner told president obama at the white house that the debt limit increase is quote my leverage. although he added that he's flexible on when it should be done. senator durbin said today that raising the debt ceiling must be part of any deal with republicans. >> i also think that the president isn't going to sign off on any agreement that doesn't include some certainty as to budgets, appropriations, dealing with our debt ceiling. we're not going to find ourselves with some big party celebrating in february and then turn around and march and have another doomsday scenario with the debt ceiling. >> the man who until this week was the most powerful person in washington who did not sleep in the white house, grover norquist, in a desperate attempt

to stay relevant, wrote an op ed piece quickly agreeing with john boehner that the debt ceiling provides plenty of leverage for the gop. the brokenhearted norquist who seems to be getting dumped along with his antitax pledge could not bring himself to issue his usual marching orders in his op-ed piece for fear that that would only provoke more of them to break up with him in a very public way. norquist's rambling piece from the hill is the work of a shattered man. with republicans no longer locked in his passionate and unyielding embrace, he is to put it charitably, confused. on the strategic question of the day, will president obama go off the cliff rather than compromise his core principles, this is the

best that the once certain grover norquist could come up with. will obama force the nation over the fiscal cliff to prove his mandate? maybe. joining me now are joy reid, managing editor of the grio and robert reich, former labor secretary and professor at the university of california berkeley. joy, are you feeling sorry for grover norquist yet? >> immensely. he's such a lonelily l man. the senate is gone. enough republican senators have signal they're going to play ball. this is about the house of representatives and really for john boehner, everything changes in a good way for him. if we go off the curb or the cliff on january 1st, he won't be dealing with that tea party caucus and that's the bee in his

bonnet that doesn't want to make a deal and by the way, a lot of them are are out the door. so greg's reporting is interesting because it signals that the white house has a public posture in which they say no, we dare not go off the cliff but we're going to get those tax rates increased and the reporting i've done tonight is that there's going to be additional meetings. this was the private version of the public meetings they did last week. now, they've been doing them in private and these are white house economic staff. people who do the policy piece. briefing folks on what they plan to do, so i think if somebody from that meeting who should have talked, but did, was saying they were feeling a sagal that the white house is ready to play chicken with their republicans. >> robert reich, as you know, someone from a meeting will always talk. this notion that there's ever going to be a successful private meeting on this is impossible. how do you evaluate the leverage

we're looking at here? president obama has leverage with a fiscal cliff, if they get to that point, all the tax rates go up and what he's doing is just offering a bill that would reduce the tax rates on most people. john boehner thinks he has leverage with the debt ceiling. how do you evaluate these two pieces of leverage? >> lawrence, the point that is missing from a lot of these games of chicken and scenarios is that we had an election and it was pretty clear. the democrats won. obama is back in. and one of the clearest issues in that election was that taxes should be raised and raised on the rich. that gives the president even more leverage. i think the president has enormous leverage. if we do go over the cliff in terms of tacks? we go back to the clinton tax rates, which as i remember it, were not so onerous.

they certainly were pretty good in terms of the economy. the economy did not suffer. the economy did much better under clinton than bush. i don't think at least on the tax side, going over the cliff is that big of a deal. it's not really a cliff at all as you suggested and if we get major cuts in the military and defense spending, i'm not sure that's a bad idea at all. >> now, joy reid, we all deal with being dumped in different ways. that is the choice grover has made tonight on cnn. let's watch. >> i don't see any movement toward ts republicans wanting to raise taxes or people wanting to break their pledge. in fact, to be fair to everybody, some of these people have had impure thoughts. no one has pulled the trigger and voted for a tax increase. >> nothing's changed. he's also lying. they have indeed voted for a tax increase.

senator tom coburn introduced last year, a bill in the senate to close the ethanol tax credit. saxby chambliss voted for it and violated their grover norquist pledge for it. >> and also, just by voting for the sequester, they have signalled their willingness to allow steep cuts in defense and tax increases. i mean, he can pretend their clothes are still in his closet and that means they're coming back, but that doesn't mean they're coming back. >> grover norquist is going to be the last person in washington to admit he is irrelevant. it is over, grover. >> yeah, people aren't quick to

admit their irrelevance in washington. "wall street journal" board is even pushing grover norquist on this. they said president obama's re-election means taxes for upper income owners are going to go up one way or the other. bush tax rates expire on december 31st. robert reich, did you ever expect that we would be reading an editorial where the "wall street journal" is telling grover norquist that he's got to give ground on the tax increase? >> no, i didn't. election day does magical things to the "wall street journal" and to a lot of the republican right. they are sounding different than before. some of them actually learned a lesson. another aspect of the leverage the president has and this is the republican nightmare, that on january 2nd, democrats come

back with legislation that says we are going to have a tax cut for the middle class and then, what do republicans do? at that particular point in time, have got to vote for this or else they look like they are essentially which is what they are, shows for the rich and grover norquist is going to have to say you must vote for this. this is a tax cut. this is the republican nightmare and it is coming. they see it coming and they don't dare use their old threat to put against a raising the debt ceiling. we went through that. they lost huge ground. the public was furious with them for threatening the faith and credit of the united states. >> not only that, but their option to prevent this is even worse. republicans have said they're willing to throw the medium rich off the side as paul krugman has reported. no, tax all their income. so they've signalled even worse options than just voting for the

big tax cut they're going to get to vote for on january 3rd. >> thank you both for joining me. >> thank you. coming up, is america ready for bush 3.0? and the politics of attacking susan rice. why senators might be interested in preventing her being nominated as secretary of state. could the massachusetts senate seat have anything to do with it? and in the rewrite, what republicans do not understand about hispanic voters and why that means democrats will keep winning. new trident layers juicy berry + tangy tangerine is a thrilling, dual-flavored ride to mouth fun-town. but it's not like everyone is going to break into a karaoke jam session. ♪ this will literally probably never happen. he loves risk. but whether he's climbing everest, scuba diving the great barrier reef with sharks, or jumping into the market, he goes with people he trusts,

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now, she might be the president's choice to succeed hillary clinton. would you support her? >> i would be very hard pressed. >> if it were john kerry? >> he became within a whisper of being president of the united states. i think that works in his favor but, i would love to hear him make his case.

but i don't have anything in his background like this tragedy in benghazi, that would make me really want to make me carefully examine the situation. >> if president obama nominating john kerry in stead of susan rice, massachusetts would hold a special election to fill kerry's seat, which provokes this question. >> would you be running again in the special election? >> there's no vacancy that i'm aware of and we'll see what happens. >> with elizabeth warren poised to be sworn in in january, today, the scott brown for senate campaign 2.0 got everything it could hope for from john mccain, lindsey graham from john mccain, lindsey graham and kelly ayotte after their meeting with ambassador rice. >> we are significantly troubled

by many of the answers that we got. >> bottom line, i'm more disturbed now than before. >> i'm more troubled today. >> senator mccain's embarrassing past with libya includes a meeting in tripoli in 2009 with gadhafi to discuss the possible delivery of military equipment to that dictator at his side at that meeting, as usual of course, was lindsey graham. also joining him was senator joe lieberman. today sh after meeting with ambassador rice, joe lieberman chose not to join the baseless criticism of ambassador rice. >> based on what she has said as clearly as possible, backed up by the director of the cia, i think it wouldn't be fair to disqualify her based on what she said. >> ambassador rice released this statement after meeting with the republican senators. while we certainly wish we had >> ambassador rice released this statement after meeting with the republican senators.

joining me now, msnbc's karen finney and howard fineman. howard, what is your understanding of how these meetings actually went today? we got a very little by way of actual reports on what went on there. you've got lindsey graham trying to say something happened in this meeting to make the situation worse. what could that have been? >> well, from talking to a top official in the white house and to senator mccain, behind closed doors, the meeting wasn't as contentious as those statements after ward made it sound. at least as regard to ambassador rice. i think both sides agree that

there are legitimate questions to be asked about the timeline of what happened in benghazi. about the state of knowledge at the time, about security protections and so forth, but as far as holding ambassador rice personally accountable for the incomplete and in some cases wrong story she gave on five different shows that sunday, i don't think that behind closed doors the republican senators were going after her personally. they came out afterwards and made it sound like the grave matter it was involving her. i don't think that's where they're at behind closed doors. >> let's listen to president obama on november 14th. about the senator's attacks on ambassador rice. >> when they go after the u.n.

ambassador, apparently because they think she's an easy target? then they've got a problem with me. and should i choose, if i think that she would be the best person to serve america, in the capacity the state department that i would nominate her. >> are these republicans painting the president into a corner where he almost has to nominate her? >> they might and susan rice should send john mccain some flowers and thank him for this behavior, but the president's answer says why this is a good fight for him. if he takes them on over this, that is a win-win for this president because he will have a lot of people behind him, both in terms of public sentiment.

we've got new polls today that suggests that where as people aren't quite thrilled with how the matter has been handled, they don't think the intention was to mislead the american people and other members of the senate have started to distance themselves from what i think is the three newest members of the bat crazy party. she went out and uses talking points not designed to mislead the american people, but were edited so that the enemy, the enemy, wouldn't know what we knew. now, that's not something that a person sworn to protect this country isn't supposed to do, then i'm not quite sure what is. >> howard, let's get into the massachusetts piece of this story. these are republicans would be very welcoming to john kerry's nominate because that would open up a senate seat. they'd have to have a special election there and say see their pal, scott brown, as maybe a shoe in for that. we have reports that congressman ed marky has looked at the seat.

>> yeah, i honestly don't think that the scott brown 2.0 wins in a flash seat in massachusetts is one that the republicans necessarily believe in unless they're more diluted than i think they are. i think it would be a tough race. i think scott brown tarnished himself with a way he ran against elizabeth warren. i think if ed marky jumps in it and he's thought about it for years and years, you know him well, lawrence. he'd be a funded candidate. have a lot of support up there. i think that the performance of john mccain and lindsey graham and now kelly ayotte, is just mostly political theatre as it relates to susan rice. yes, there are legitimate questions about benghazi globally for american diplomats, but the susan rice thing has a sort of measure of insanity about it and really is a kind of thing lawrence and we've seen it a million times.

sometimes, washington goes crazy over what is essentially a non substantive high school orkt and i think that's what the thing with susan rice is. acknowledging the legitimate issues, susan rice is not the issue. definitely not the issue. if i were susan rice, i'd be mad at the press people for sending her out there the way she did. they handed her a bad piece of paper, look a good soldier, she went out there and said it on five channels. it's not her fault. >> take the last word on this. >> i don't agree, but more importantly, this is the sad demise of john mccain, who used to be someone that i think

people looked up to and respected and increasingly, he looks small and petty and it's very sad to see it happening. >> thank you both for joining me tonight. coming up, mitt romney did not win the title of president, but he did win the title of least influential person of the year and later, some republicans who were certain mitt romney was going to win are now coming up with some pretty crazy ideas about why he lost. [ male announcer ] we all make bad decisions.

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rick santorum and other dazed and confused republicans don't think it's time for republicans to change their ways in any of their bat crack crazy tea party ideas in order to win elections, which of course is good news for democrats and that's coming up. one is for a clean, wedomestic energy future that puts us in control. our abundant natural gas is already saving us money, producing cleaner electricity, putting us to work here in america and supporting wind and solar. though all energy development comes with some risk,

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in the spotlight tonight, bush 3.0. jeb bush met yesterday with a group of his former staffers at a hotel just steps away from the white house and refused to answer questions about a possible presidential run in 2016. in an interswru online, bush did not rule out a presidential run. he simply said that quote, i am here to catch up with folks and promote education reform. and today, on the day that gq crowned mitt romney the number one least influential person of the year, jeb bush hosted a

national summit on education reform in washington. exactly the kind of thing presidential candidates do at this stage leading up to the xul announcement of their candidacy. yesterday, chris christie announced he will seek re-election as governor and he played around with it, reminding people of his potential presidential candidacy. >> i made up my mind, so i'm telling you. >> according to a new quinnipiac poll, less than a month after sandy hit new jersey, voters there have given him a 72% approval rating. the highest recorded by

quinnipiac for a new jersey governor. ever. 95% of new jersey voters gave christie an excellent or good rating for his response to hurricane sandy. and despite criticism from some national republican leaders, 84% approved of christie's praise of president obama's response to the storm, including 69% of republicans. newark's democratic mayor, cory booker, told the new jersey star ledger today, quote, i'm giving a run consideration. critical to my decision is not the difficulties of the politics or positioning in polls, but choosing the position from which i can make the best contributions to the city and state i love. meanwhile, a new rutgers eagleton poll finds governor christie leading mayor booker in a hypothetical race, 53 to 34%. joining me now, david corn and msnbc political analyst, jonathan allen, senior

washington correspondent for politico. david corn, let's talk about cory booker for a moment, who i think was poised to run for governor probably prior to chris christie's poll numbers going where they are now, but shouldn't he be looking more seriously at frank lautenberg's senate seat? he's 88 years old. his seat's up in 2014. he will be 90 years old. i, for one, cannot imagine lautenberg running for re-election at age 90. that's going to be an open seat, isn't it? >> it looks like it. if he ran against christie, i guess they could have a contest on who helped obama the most in 2012 and christie might win this. lawrence, you know politicians better than anybody. until they're actually willing

to el us their decision, everything's an open door. christie has higher approval numbers than probably bruce springsteen would have in the state. it remains to be seen if the numbers will stay that high. they weren't that high earlier in the year. new jersey's unemployment was higher than the national average. cory booker has a few months here to decide what's the better bet for him. governor's race or an open senate seat. >> in the timing of this, given how much it's going to cost to run in new jersey, you have to buy new york television time to run ads in new jersey, the most expensive time in the country. you also have to buy philadelphia advertising to run tv ads in the southern end of the state. it's a very expensive proposition. you've got to start raising that

money right now. you got to make a fast decision if you're running for this office. isn't what is likely to be a open senate seat the better play for cory booker where i think if he made it into the senate, he would be a star. >> i think you're right and in fact, the possible christie booker match-up would be sort of the battle of the network stars. i think the nation knows these two guys from television probably as well as any two state politicians in the country, but they're not mutually exclusive. this is a 2013 gubernatorial race. i don't know what booker's thinking is. i don't know if if it's possible to run two statewide campaigns back-to-back, but the advantage he would have is that new jersey is one of only a couple of races on the map in 2013, which means if he's trying to raise money, there are a lot of donors out there that aren't going to be

giving to a lot of other races. >> there's a nonpolitical factor to consider here. i hate even to say that, but if you look at the two different jobs, governor and senator, booker is probably more attuned to being a governor. this is a guy who likes to do things. get out there. break a sweat. be in charge and i think you're right. he'd be a star in the senate, but what we've seen him up to date, the governor's job is probably more to his just personal liking. >> jonathan, let's get to this, what the maneuvers we're seeing already on the republican 2016 presidential race. here you have jeb bush not making any attempt to deny in any way that he might run for president in 2016 and then you see him doing this week exactly what you would do if you were thinking about it. we see marco rubio going out to iowa already. it seems like these people are getting themselves into place already. >> i'm sure marco rubio visited area many, many times before he was a united states senator.

>> yeah. >> these people would tell you this isn't about a presidential race, but of course it is about taking the temperature there. there are a lot of republicans thinking about running in 2016. i think some of those decisions will be contingent on who's running. jeb bush is about as big a fish as you could find in the republican pond. there probably isn't enough room if for both him and marco rubio to run. paul ryan i think is a potential candidate in 2016 and then a number of others, bob mcdonald, the governor of virginia. if he finds something that's helpful to him to raise his profile. i think these guys are trying to get an idea of what the contributions would be like. what the field looks like. what kind of platform they could put together to appeal to the voters that mitt romney did not. obviously, mitt romney had a

huge deficit with african-american voters, hispanic voters and women voters, so i think these potential candidates are trying to map it out. >> david corn, when george w. bush ran, he got such a quick surge in the polls that no one was able to stop him. is jeb bush that guy this time? is he the one that if he makes it clear he's running, others will decide not to? >> you know, i still wonder if two words come to mind. too soon. i mean, the george w. bush presidency is still not held in high esteem amongst many voters who still blame bush for the economic downturn at the end of his administration that has carried us to this day. jeb bush has the ability to talk to hispanic, more moderate, but i also wonder if you know, people will be a little tired of the bush dynasty come to 2016. >> well, they're too tired of it now, but 2016 is a few years away.

thank you both for joining me tonight. coming up, good news for democrats trying to keep control of the senate in 2014 and one republican whose strategy for dealing with latino voters is to completely give up on them. that's next in the rewrite. want to try to crack it? yeah, that's the way to do it!

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♪ rick santorum has an announcement. i know what you're thinking, who cares. but it's an announcement that every democrat is hoping that every republican follows exactly the way rick santorum wants them to. that's coming up. and in the rewrite, the newest republican strategy for hispanic voters, how about completely give up on ever winning their votes? [ male announcer ] alka-seltzer plus presents the cold truth. i have a cold, and i took nyquil, but i'm still "stubbed" up. [ male announcer ] truth is, nyquil doesn't unstuff your nose. what? [ male announcer ] it doesn't have a decongestant. no way. [ male announcer ] sorry.

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from liberty mutual insurance. total your car, and we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. learn about it at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility -- what's your policy? republicans who firmly believed mitt romney was going to be swept in the presidency are now rewriting their understanding of the american electorate. consider this bit of punditry from tim wildman. he is the president of american family radio. a presidency that he earned the old fashioned way. he inherited it from his father. >> i think that the hispanics here illegally getting amnesty for their hispanics is a high

priority for them and the democrat party offers them the best hope to do that. yes, they're catholic, so most are pro-life. but that doesn't trump social justice is what they call it. that's the reason they vote democrat and also, they are used to a socialist form of government in mexico, which is big government, welfare programs, so that's what they're going to vote for over the republicans. >> with republican punditry like that, democrats have nothing to fear. tim says quote, getting amnesty for their fellow mexicans or hispanics is a high priority for hispanic votes. if tim had bothered to check the exit polls, he would have discovered ha the number one issue for hispanic voters was the economy. 60% of hispanic voters identified the economy has the most important issue in a presidential election in which

71% of them voted for president obama. the economy was actually a tiny bit more important to hispanic voters than to voters like tim. exactly one more percent important. 59% of all voters identified the ecompany has the most important issue. a strong majority of latinos favors a path to citizenship for undocumented residents of the united states, but so does a strong majority of all voters. 65% of all voters favor that same path to citizenship. tim says latinos are quote catholic, so most of them are are pro-life. what tim wildman doesn't know about catholics is that they generally support roe versus

wade slightly more and catholics overwhelmingly believe that catholics should feel free to make up their own minds about abortion. the recent poll asked do you think catholics should always obey official church teachings on such issues at birth control and abortion or do i think it is possible for them to make up their own minds on these issues? 88% of catholics said they should be free to make up their own minds. latinos generally poll a bit more conservative than all catholics on abortion questions. the other big explainer tim wildman has for the reason the latino vote went democrat is quote, they are used to a socialist form of government in mexico. which is big government, welfare programs, so that's who they're going to vote for over the republicans. tim doesn't seem to realize a couple of things here.

first, the united states has a much bigger big government welfare program that mexico could ever dream of and second, those people left mexico looking for a different kind of life than they could have in mexico. people who come to the united states after being unable to make a living in their home countries have never tried to turn the united states into their home countries where they couldn't make a living, so what is tim's strategy for improving republican results with latino voters? >> so, obviously, i hate to be pessimistic for people who would be a republican, but i just don't see the republicans being able to get anymore percentage votes from hispanics. >> his strategy for dealing with the fastest growing segments of the electorate is to completely

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good news from rick santorum who is pledging to fight to keep republicans focused on those crazy tea party positions that

are helping them lose elections. i think there's a fight right now as to what the soul of the republican party's going to be and the conservative movement and we have something to say about that. i think from our battle, we're not going to leave the field. republicans would probably have control of the senate today if they had nominated anyone but these losing republican senate nominees. >> i think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is it is something god intended to happen. >> if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that down. >> i am not a witch. >> there's a west virginia race today, in which shelley capitoe,

jared may not run for election. he's about 75 years old, but she in a poll in west virginia, very troubling poll for senator rockefeller in august was leading him 48 to 44. very bad poll to be in that situation and the republicans are saying she's not conservative enough. >> this is fascinating, but i think you're right to spotlight it. >> just this moment. it became national news. >> are we on national television? >> number one, the cultural war is over because we won. tolerant people won. liberal people won. women won. what you see is a challenge to people like capito, who on nonculture war issues, pretty

normal conservatives and the tea party which claimed to be so obsessed with deficits now, is starting to flirt with these other litmus tests. if they want to keep going this to themselves, they are going to continue to undermine people who are politically strong. rockefeller's a big name in west virginia. >> and so, jim demint comes out an says we can't support her. do they know that that haven't elected a republican to the senate in about 4,000 years? >> that's the question and it's very frustrating for them because they feel west virginia is naturally conservative. what they have is a washington establishment that thinks they know better.

>> saxby chambliss is now promoting this walk. it's who do they think they can run and win more conservative than saxby chambliss? >> i don't know, but sort of reminds me of like a magical realist novel framework, what happens to people when they have no memory? the republican society today, establishment society. >> what kind of memory doesn't work from like a week ago? >> well, they came over a week ago and can't remember the bush era because they grew the deficits. another thing was saying capito was for the patriot act and that upset the hard core conservatives. every republican senator vot